We'd Have Tea
by eva
Summary: Different from the fanfics I usually write. Joyce's POV. Enjoy.


disclaimer: i don't own the characters. i borrow them without asking.   
  
We'd Have Tea  
  
by eva   
  
We'd have tea sometimes.   
  
It was strange. Buffy never had a love for tea before but I guess that's what age does to a person. I wasn't exactly fond of tea myself when I was young many years ago. It was too bitter for me. But now I drink it on a regular basis with my daughter while talking about years that had gone by too quickly, recent news, the weather... Anything that crossed our minds.   
  
Earlier this evening, she had come for the usual visit we had every day. I'm serious; never missed one day, not one. I keep track. Anyway, she came over and we sat down in the worn, fading couch that we sat in everyday and talked, sometimes over ice cream, or black coffee. But we usually had tea.   
  
My head is completely gray and silver now; I stopped dying my hair a long time ago, preferring to age gracefully unlike most women who drown themselves in powder and rouge. I was always different like that. I knew deep wrinkles lined my elderly face and my hands trembled too much. But that was expected from a woman as old as me. I knew my back was hunched over a little and my hands were gnarled from arthritis. I knew this because I can see myself in the mirror everyday. But Buffy swears up and down that I am as beautiful as the day I turned twenty. I say the same to Buffy, who doesn't have a reflection, but I know I am telling the gospel truth. She hasn't changed from the day she turned twenty, literally. She will always be my little girl, my child, her lovely pale face forever frozen in time.   
  
On our birthdays, we'd go out and celebrate at a different restaurant every year and if we found a good one- restaurants, I mean- we'd go there twice. But never more than two times; it was a rule. We had thought about keeping one restaurant as a permanent place for our birthday rendezvous, but seeing two women walk into a restaurant twice a year, one aging while the other did not, well, that would have roused suspicion.   
  
This year, for my ninety-eighth birthday, she took me to a quaint little restaurant in France called... Oh, I forgot the name, but it was wonderful. We laughed and giggled like the young girls we were not. I'd marvel sometimes at the fact that I can still walk at age ninety-eight. Maybe because of that girl's spell. What was her name? Talia? Tammy? Something like that. Age does that to a mind.   
  
On my birthday, she bought a small chocolate cake, perfect for us because I didn't eat much now and Buffy, well, she isn't particularly fond of solid food. That day was different from all the days before because we discussed things we never talked about before. Like her unlife. She confessed how scared she was of being alone when I'm gone and sobbed softly into my frail shoulder. I had stroked her golden hair with my gnarled fingers, soothing her with words that fell from my thin lips. We must have gotten a couple strange looks that day from other people in the restaurant. But who cares, I'm a mother. And it hurt me to see my baby cry.   
  
When she calmed, I told her to go find Angel and stay with him; maybe even find a cure for his curse. Or maybe Spike. He and Buffy had been so close before he left after Buffy regained her soul with the spell Willow developed, blaming himself for not protecting her. I've always like him. And he's always loved my daughter. I told her to forget me and go find them and be happy. She just smiled at me, innocence combining with the flecks of light in her hazel-green eyes, her composure fully regained, and told me she had an eternity to find them; forever. She told me she was happy just being with me. Because our time together will never compare to eternity.   
  
Of course this made me happy. We both cried. It was a birthday drenched with tears but filled with euphoria and understanding.   
  
Today, I brought out the sixteen albums I keep in the closet and we laughed and wept reminisced over each page. A great majority of the albums are filled with pictures Buffy had taken of me. I guess she wanted as many memories of me as possible. We both enjoy looking at the earlier albums more, though.   
  
There are pages full of pictures of her friends, the Scooby Gang as she fondly recalled. We even have some pictures of Spike even though he had been reluctant to take them. But Buffy had gotten him to let her take them. She had a way with Spike that no one could even begin to touch.   
  
There was one picture Buffy especially loves. It was a photograph Giles had taken of them when they were in high school. Willow, Xander, and Buffy had gone out to celebrate the defeat of some demon or other and happiness was apparent in their youthful eyes, void of all the horror that would come later on. It was a moment of joy and hope and love captured between the clear plastic sheets of a miscellaneous album. Xander and Willow's deaths were hard on my baby girl. And Gile's death had nearly crushed her. He had been like a father to her. I know she still misses them even now. But I will not dwell on the past.   
  
When I found out that Buffy was a slayer, that she could die and vanish form my life at any moment and I'd never see her again, I went ballistic. It was unacceptable; parents are not supposed to outlive their children. But it was my fate to. Now the tables are turned and I was going to die before her. A little part of me, a very minute part, is secretly and selfishly glad that I did not have to go through the pain of losing my baby girl. But a larger part of me grieves because she has to feel the pain. And as a mother, my priority is to protect her from this misery. But I can't stop nature no matter how hard I try, no matter how hard I love her. I knew what it feels like to lose a mother. It was an end of the world, heart and mind shattering experience and I would rather die then have her face it. How ironic.   
  
And now I lay my gray head on the pillow, tired, old bones creaking like the springs in my bed, hoping to fall asleep quickly so tomorrow would come faster, so I could see Buffy again. But I knew full well that I may not live to see tomorrow, that Buffy might find me lifeless next morning. That the pain might come earlier then I predicted.   
  
But I also knew that I may live another day, maybe another week, a month, a year. There was always that chance. And maybe we'd talk again, my Buffy and I; we'd have tea. 


End file.
